Authors: Caitlen Rubino-Bradway
I slid off the desk mechanically and grabbed Eila. We had to pry Naija’s hands off the goblin and drag her back into the hall.
It felt like we’d been in Fran’s room forever, but I realized later it couldn’t have been more than a minute. The minotaurs were there when we came out. One charged over to us and I couldn’t hear what he was shouting above the alarm, but he was pointing to the doors at the end of the hallway. Naija pulled me toward the stairway. Eila was yelling “Out! Out now!” and I went with them, one sluggish foot in front of the other. But my mind wasn’t there with them. It was back in Fran’s room, staring out the window.
The minotaur was already running down the hallway, throwing open doors. We ducked out of the way as Mr. O’Hara, magic crackling around him, clambered up the stairs with two other minotaurs. They shouted something to us about the vault, gathering in the vault. “It should be clear by now!” Mr. O’Hara shouted over his shoulder.
He was about to rush down our hallway, but one of the minotaurs stopped him—“Upstairs, they need you upstairs!”—and Mr. O’Hara leaped up, passing through the ceiling with a soft
zuzz
. Naija tugged on my arm, tried to pull me back into the stairway. “Abby, please, please, we must get out of this place.”
I shook my head, watching as the minotaurs yelled and went after something in Cesar’s room.
“Abby,” Eila said. Her voice was hard and hot, like a parent’s voice when you did something wrong. “We need to go down the stairs right now.” But I started running down the hall.
No
… Past the rows of open doors and empty rooms.
No no no no no no.
To Fred and Peter’s room.
Inside, the room was torn apart—furniture broken, books
everywhere, the window busted open. In the same moment I spotted a wrinkled red-capped little monster starting to climb out the window, and a stick. A big, heavy stick, like a mage’s staff. I think it was a broken part of the bed. I picked it up and ran over, swinging as I ran, and
crack!
The goblin toppled back, and I flung myself on it, not thinking, clawing at its cap. It came free with a little sucking pop. The goblin screeched in pain.
“Not right! Not fair!” it howled. “Give us back our cap! Give it back!” I didn’t, and I was afraid of myself in that moment. “We are
sorry
! We didn’t mean any harm! We are just so hungry! She said—she said she would help us, and then she doesn’t let us eat anything!”
“She?” It took me a second to realize that was my voice.
“She, she!” the goblin agreed. “She take half, we take half. It’s not fair, she doesn’t need half. She need one, she said she need
one
for dungeon!
I’m so hungry!
” It started scratching at its head, writhing, desperate.
It’s funny how you can know something even before your brain completely catches up. Sometimes you don’t need the whole puzzle. The
she
and
dungeon
were enough.
Then there was a minotaur, holding the goblin at spear point, and O’Hara’s voice, so gentle it didn’t seem real, saying, “All right there, Abby. It’s all right now. I’ll take this, here we go,” and he eased my fingers open to take the cap away. “That was very clever of you. You’re all right?”
“I’m all right,” I echoed.
“Wonderful. Your parents would be very angry with us if we let anything happen to you. Since you’re quite all right, I
think you should go down to the vault now. Everyone’s in the vault, it’s nice and safe down there. Do you think you can go on your own? The route is safe, but do you want someone to come with you?”
“I can go on my own,” I said, and it sounded and felt like my voice. It’d be harder to get away if someone was with me.
Mr. O’Hara nodded, patting my shoulder, and I headed out.
The stairway was quiet, but there was more crashing and yelling on the first floor. I didn’t stop to check it out, but I did see a minotaur run at a goblin on all fours, face shining with determination.
Then I was out the front door. The courtyard was lit up, and Mrs. Murphy and Ms. Macartney were herding students to the vault. There was shouting and noise and above it all Mrs. Murphy’s voice telling everyone to remain calm, so it really wasn’t that hard to slip into the dark shadows of the alcove. The vault would have weapons, but I’d never get back out. Cook Bella had a glittery set of knives in a locked drawer in the kitchen, but even if I could smash it open and get one I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I glanced back at the dorm; I could see flashes of light through the windows and dark shapes skittering down the walls.
The main gate opened with a
creak
that I hoped no one heard. I started running.
It had stopped raining at some point. The air was heavy, and warm with the first hint of spring, and the cobblestones were slick with rain under my bare feet—I really should have grabbed some shoes before running out. I heard sirens tearing through the night, caught the flashing lights of police carpets behind me, heading toward the school, but the rest of the streets were dead quiet. It was eerie; Rothermere is supposed to be the city that never sleeps, but at four in the morning, the streets were empty.
Good thing Becky had us run so much. I wasn’t even winded when I reached the castle. The plaza circling the castle is wide and open and, at that time of the night, completely abandoned. I didn’t see any guards—visible or invisible—but that didn’t mean no one was watching, so I kept to the alleys. And I waited.
That was the hardest part. Looking back it felt like one endless moment, eyes and ears open,
willing
her to show up. She had to show up.
And then, wonderfully, from a few alleys away—I heard her voice, yelling at someone. No one else could say
ord
with that level of disgust. I ran over, almost forgetting for a second not to run directly out onto castle grounds.
She was in a dark little corner of a dark little alley.
Trixie.
Worn and pale and ragged and … bandaged. Her arms were wrapped up, hand to shoulder, and most of her legs, until she looked like an escaped mummy. She was hissing, “You will listen to me if you want to live,” as she struggled with—
“
Peter!
” It came out a lot louder than I intended. He looked rumpled and exhausted and annoyed, but he looked okay, other than the fact that Trixie had his arm twisted so far behind his back that he was on tiptoes. They looked up at my shout, and for a second they both had the exact same surprised expression. And then Peter tried to shove Trixie and get away, yelling “Abby, get out of here!” but she held on, almost absentmindedly. Because she was looking at me now. Glaring at me.
“You?” Trixie’s cry was as hot and harsh as brimstone. “Of course. Of
course
you’re alive.”
“Are you okay?” I ran toward Peter, but he pushed me away one-armed and yelled for me to
go away, go away
as Trixie started cursing about me turning up more times than an enchanted ring. “Fred—Fran—they took Fran, and the goblin said something about … divvying them up.”
Trixie was still spitting like a basilisk. “I
told
those goblins—and when they didn’t come back with you, I
hoped
you were dead.”
“She sold them,” Peter said, and the anger in his voice almost
covered the way it broke. “She gave some to the red caps and she sold the rest.”
“S-sold?” The shock made me stumble. “How? To who?”
Trixie gave a patronizingly irritated sigh. “I have had time to think about this. To plan. And, believe me, it’s not hard to find buyers, especially with your school cornering the market.” She unhooked a pouch from her belt and tossed it at me; it jingled expensively when it hit the pavement. “
That
will give me and Mike the means to go wherever we need to hide from your king, with enough left over for our next six adventures. Almost makes me consider ord dealing professionally.”
I stared at the pouch, wondering how much was in it. Then I decided I didn’t really care.
“Now, it is so nice seeing you again,” Trixie continued, yanking on Peter’s arm until he cried out, “but your friend and I have some business to take care of.”
“Stop right there.” I tried to sound like the heroes in action movies. They always say that stuff to let the bad guys know they mean business, and then the bad guys always have a moment of
oh no
when they realize they’re in trouble because the hero is not going to let them get away with it.
Trixie laughed.
“I mean it,” I said, pointing my finger at her. “Let him go.”
“No,” Trixie said, still laughing. Then her face went bitter as she took a step closer to me. “Tell me, little ord. How exactly are you going to stop me?”
“I’m, I’m not,” I said, telling myself
don’t back up, don’t back up
as she took another step. “I’ll help you.”
Trixie bore down on me, slow and steady, until we were face to, well, belly button. She cupped my chin with one mummified hand and nudged it up so she could smirk down at me. “Help me. How?”
“Abby,
shut up
,” Peter said.
I ignored him. “I’ll get Barbarian Mike out. That’s why you’re here, right?” I rushed on. “To break him out. You can’t go in yourself, there are shields and wards and the magic is too strong. That’s what you need one of us for. Let Peter and the others go, and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything you want and afterward, I’ll go with you. You guys needed an ord, right? I’ll go with you, free of charge.” I really hoped I didn’t sound as desperate as I thought I did. “Just let him go. That’s all. Just let him go.”
Trixie wasn’t laughing anymore. “How noble. But it didn’t work when he tried it”—she gave Peter’s arm a sharp jerk—“and I’m certainly not going to listen to the little brat who ruined everything,” she finished on a growl.
She started dragging Peter toward the plaza. I raced to block her, arms out. “No, no, no, you want me—
me
, not him, because I’ve seen him. Barbarian Mike.” That stopped her. She was still glaring at me, but her eyes were speculative. “I asked King Steve if I could see him—Mike. I know where his cell is. I know what staircase to use.” I jabbed a finger at Peter. “
He
probably doesn’t even know about the giant spider.”
Trixie arched an eyebrow. “You’re making that up.”
“I am
not
,” I insisted. “And, and, and—you’re right. I am the brat who ruined everything. The king likes me. And that’s why he came down so hard on Mike. If you had kidnapped
anybody else, you wouldn’t be here now, and Mike wouldn’t be in there. The two of you, you would have gotten a stern talking to and been sent packing. But you didn’t.”
Trixie’s face grew harder and darker as I talked, and I could smell the magic gathering around her, thick and smoldering. “Do you know what they’re going to do to him?” Her free hand wrapped around my neck, and I had to force myself not to scream and kick and flail. “Do you know what I had to do to get those goblins on my side?”
Then she took a deep breath and smiled. “All right, then. If you’re so eager to repay your debt—”
“Let him go first,” I said, nodding toward Peter.
“No. Don’t think for one second that I trust you to go off like a good little ord and rescue Mike just because you said you would. You go break Mike out, and I’ll use the time to think up all the lovely things I can do to your friend if you don’t return. When Mike is standing here before me, safe and sound, then we can reconsider. Oh, and—” She nodded at the money pouch on the ground. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
I crouched down and carefully picked up the leather bag. Peter watched as I hooked it back on her belt. “Don’t do this,” he said, staring into me. “Please. Don’t go.”
“We’re not friends,” I told him, squeezing my eyes shut. I didn’t want to look at him. “I don’t have to listen to you.”
Trixie twisted a leisurely hand through my hair and pulled me away. She nodded to the castle.
“All right,” I said. “Come with me.”
The dungeon entrance, like the main doors for the palace, was the sort of thing you couldn’t really pass by and not notice. It was a massive set of double doors—huge and heavy and carved with intimidating, eye-catching runes. The doors were bolted shut with an immense bar that, according to the guidebooks, had been forged out of ogre clubs.
I ran straight past it. Like the main entrance, those doors were just for show. I led Trixie (dragging Peter as he tried to dig his heels in) through the shadows to an alley right across from the little hidden door Alexa and I had used the day we’d come for tea. After we’d visited Barbarian Mike, King Steve had brought us up and out through the same door, so I figured I could backtrack my steps.
“Wait here,” I told her breathlessly. “I’ll be back.”
I raced across the wide-open plaza to the castle, hoping somebody would see me. This was the royal palace, after all, they had to have eyes out. The castle itself was probably
watching, and if it was watching, it could tell somebody and I’d get some help. Right?
Alexa had needed a good fifteen minutes to open the door the last time we were here. I just had to hold my breath and charge through.
The hallway was the same—short and beige, with an ordinary door at the end and little (in)visible portals all along the walls, and the two guards—
guards,
oh, thank goodness, I knew there had to be somebody. I think I scared them a little, because I basically launched myself at them and started babbling. “Please, please, you have to help me, Trixie’s out there and she’s got Peter and she’s going to hurt him, she already hurt him—”
One of the guards, the older one with the gruff voice and the beard, pried me off, set me on my feet, and demanded that I
calm down
. “What do you think you’re doing? How did you get in here?”
But the other guard, the younger one with the serious face and solemn blue eyes, crouched down in front of me. “Are you hurt?”
“What?” I gasped, and it took me a second. Oh. My nightgown. The red caps.
Oh
. “It’s a long story, and I don’t have
time
—”